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The Historic Demise Of The Ever-Shrinking Dollar: An Infographic
The almighty Dollar is looking less mighty these days. By almost every measure, the purchasing power of the US Dollar is in precipitous decline. The following infographic, whose contents should be well-known to our readers, visualizes the sad state of affairs that the average American seems to have ignored for far too long. And since the whole world is now engaged in the 4th year of all out currency debasement one can safely channel Lester Burnham and say it's "all downhill from here."
Infographic By Wholesale Gold Group
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You wouldn't last 3 minutes.
Maybe you could put Mr. Jingles in the box. See who gets that..
Just keep getting fatter and stupider, that way you wont be competition in the mayhem when the bennies get cut off...
"Gold and economic freedom are inseparable … In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit Spending is simply a scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights." - Alan Greenspan, 1966
According to the CPI calculator here, it takes $2.78 now to equal $1 in 1980,
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
so I wonder where the author is getting his 129% figure.
"According to the CPI, one dollar in 1980 was worth 129% more than it is today."
"A dollar is worth 4 cents compared to a dollar in 1913"
Damn, I wish I wasn't getting paid in these 1913 dollars! Oh wait, I'm not!
While technically correct, there is a bit of hyperbole in that quote. Similarly, this article is a bit of meat tossing, which should not be unexpected, coming as it does from the equivalent of one of those "I have this can't lose trading system and I'm willing to sell it to you for the amazingly low price of..." (rather than keep it for myself).
Most of the dollar decline has been felt in the last decade or so, owing to a combination of ZIRP/QE and globalization/outsourcing. For most of the last hundred years, the combination of wage adjustment and return on savings/investments kept up with the "decline" in the value of the dollar. The old adage about a gold coin and a decent man's suit is an apples and oranges argument. Rather than say how many dollars it takes today relative to 1913, it is more comparable to say what percent of the average wage today relative to 1913 buys a decent men's suit. Besides the fact nobody buried their dollars in the ground, there is also nobody who was earning a wage in 1913---other than perhaps Mickey Rooney---who is currently in the market for a decent men's suit. It might take 19x more 1913 dollars to buy a decent man's suit, but it does not take 19x the average wage today relative to the 1913 average wage to buy it.
Obviously this wage/price adjustment is a dangerous game that may have run its course, and has taken a hit from ZIRP (or earlier from the demand initiated when women joined the workforce en masse) but the dollar's decline (so far) is not as bad as how the gold sellers---who still are happy to take your fiat for their "real money"---portray it.
Considering what is possible---and what has actually happened---how many of these same PM sellers, who continuously note the dollar's "96% decline since 1913" ever note silver's 94% decline in the far shorter time period of 1980 to the mid 1990s? Can't happen again?
What was Cosimo's claim to fame ? Oh yeah, high finance and cornering the market on alum. I may not like you....
Clinton, Robert Ruben, W. Bush, Obama, Greenspan, John Snow, Bernanke, Hank Paulson, Geithner, blah, blah,blah talked a good game of a strong dollar......... ALL completely full of shit!
American consumers want inexpensive goods, period! Doesn't matter where the little green dollars go, just get gadgets, clothing, video games, etc... into our fat little minds and bodies.
American bankers love the zero interest policy; free overnight loans in addition to massive savings accounts generating no interest leaves lots of margin money for scum bags like Dimon, Corzine, Blankfein, to dip into and make massive bets.
The one man I can think of who stood up to the bullshit was Paul O'Neil. He told W. to take his compassionate conservatism, Medicare Plan B, neocon warmongering, and tax cuts for everyone; all of which would and did lead to massive budget deficits and a weaker dollar, and to stick it up his righteous ass.
Pelosi, Reid, Dodd/Frank, Hastert, all spent on a drunken tear.
This country needs one mean mother fucker with a no nonsense approach to get us back on track. I don't know who it is yet, but we probably have 4 more years to find the right guy; because a little bird tells me the current moron using the White House bathrooms will probably get re-elected.
It's just the Opium Wars redux now being delivered as the Hopium Wars as the synthetic software (opiate) and iShit as the hardware delivery system which together both effectively rob, enslave and handicap you like you're a 19th century asian feudal coolie.
George Orwell's father was an administrative agent for the East India Company whose primary responsibility was for tracking the harvest of opium from Afghanistan that was then shipped into China to enslave the local workers and destroy the indigenous social fabric...sound familiar? He knew very much what of he wrote and apparently what it could become...
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.And how many iPads did that 1980 dollar buy as compared to today?
Exactly.
That's what I'm talking about! Sorry...What was I talking about?
Brought to you by...Wholesale Gold Group. Interesting.
Going back on the Gold Standard seems like really wishful thinking.
My guess would be that the new Gold Standard would issue new Notes backed by Gold?
Like GLD, right?
Paper and digits are just like the real thing.
End of the day, currency is all about faith.
I doubt a "gold standard" is going to bring more faith to a US issued currency.
Those days are long gone.
The fixtures in DC are starting to buy into the notion. What does that tell you?
Those days are long gone? They've been saying that for 5,000 years. And if you thinkGLD has any gold backing it, you are mistaken. Ask yourself this: When gold goes up,and GLD suddenly adds X millions of ounces, where do they get it? What do they do to suddenly get millions of ounces added overnight--go down and get some at Gold-R-Us? The answer is they get it in zeros and ones on a computer. Even the Chinese need time to amass great amounts of gold. Yet, GLD gets theirs overnight??? Give me a break!
Please get real everyone who falls for the currently popular "back to the future" ploy. I refer to the idea that the predators-that-be will be forced to return to a "gold standard".
Just remember this. There is only ONE gold standard that actually IS a gold standard --- and is honest, ethical and workable. EVERY variant is pure scam, and designed to enable the predators-that-be to steal more from producers and increase their control.
The only real, honest gold standard --- and the only mechanism that can honestly be called a gold standard --- is one in which you pay with real, physical gold AND nobody anywhere may engage in any form of fractional reserve practices.
Now, can people write checks and purchases with debt-cards and credit-cards? Certainly! However, this only shifts the ownership of their physical gold held by their bank from the buyer bank to the seller bank. ALL banks must actually have as much real, physical gold as is currently credited to their account holders --- with zero exceptions.
Oh, and there may be no central bank creating gold certificates or gold debt or dollar-linked-to-gold debt and lending to banks and government. In fact, there may be no central bank.
Debt Jubilee!
Really, the only answer.
That, or riots and another World War.
With less to buy, the dollar is doomed to buy less.
'Americans' have put the world on the path of depletion of resources...
What is missing from this chart is the huge increase in wealth in that time period. Keeping a currency pegged to some form of metal will largely impair the ability of that country's economy to grow.
The ability to "grow" is not affected if the price (value) of the metal rises in proportion to the growth of the economy (money printed). The common fallacy (widely believed) is that if a dollar is pegged to gold or any other metal, then the dollar is restricted and spending is restricted. Not true. What's restricted is the loss of value in the dollar, which over time forces better spending decisions. The growth of wealth over the past half century is clearly the growth of debt, by the way, not real wealth, which has bankrupted the planet. That's why we're all reading ZeroHedge everyday.
Three slices of bread bitchez
Ok hang on.
You can still get a loaf of bread for less than 2.00, so how do you figure .80 cents for 3 slices? I dont know anyone that charges 5.60 for a loaf of bread.